


Exhale

by RisuAlto



Series: Junisce's Story [5]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Post-Sun-in-Shadow, the gods are dicks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 12:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21476269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisuAlto/pseuds/RisuAlto
Summary: Holding the breath for too long causes the body to start to shut down.  Junisce has so much to keep inside, now, though, and buried under the weight of the answers she sought for so long, she can't remember how to exhale.
Series: Junisce's Story [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1548025
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Pillars of Eternity Prompts Weekly





	Exhale

**Author's Note:**

> For prompt #0001, "Homecoming."
> 
> Junisce is a meadow folk druid from the Living Lands with high Stoic and Honest reputations.

Despite the mud and dust now painting her cloak, it was worth it to fall back against the cavern wall for just a second. Absently, Jun noted that it wasn’t a smooth landing—something was poking roughly into her back between her shoulder blades. But it was like her nerves were asleep, a layer of thick, soft moss between them and her brain, and so everything felt so very, very far away.

“Watcher?”

Jun sighed shakily. Some part of her had clung desperately to the hope that stopping Thaos, doing all the gods’ dirty work, wouldn’t just stop the nightmares, but that it would somehow replace the barrier that should be in her mind keeping kith safely separate from the In-Between. Seeing souls, being drawn into them everywhere she turned… it was a weight on Junisce’s shoulders that might as well have been a guillotine.

She never wanted to be a Watcher. She just wanted it all to stop, wanted things to be like they were before.

“Junisce!” 

There was a muted tap on her cheek. Junisce shook her head. Everything was blurry.

And then the slap bit into her senses for what it was, like the sting of an insect so aggressive that these Southerners would never believe it. Tingling waves of discomfort—aches, fatigue, stinging cuts, and damp sweat—diffused through her body. It reminded Junisce of the way it felt when Aloth used the Ring of Unshackling, except there was no sensation of being freed from anything. The _only_ thing Junisce felt when the fog cleared was _tired_, lethargic, and weak. She blinked rapidly, struggling to focus on the shape above her.

A sturdy hand came to rest on her neck, just under her jaw. The fingers were rough but warm against her clammy skin. “Hey,” said Sagani. “You back with us?”

Sagani. Standing over her? Junisce didn’t remember sitting down in the first place.

“Here,” called Edér from somewhere off to the left, apparently having backed away from digging through the tunnel for the moment. Junisce watched as a waterskin sailed from Edér’s hand to Sagani’s, though the dwarf caught it with barely a glance in Edér’s direction. “Can’t go losing you now, ‘specially not to something silly like dehydration.”

Sagani held the pouch to Junisce’s lips. “C’mon,” she coaxed, and Junisce drank gratefully, survival instincts fighting fervently to keep her from chugging the whole thing.

“Is…?” Another voice, this one higher and more delicate… flighty. Aloth. Junisce glanced up, over Sagani’s shoulders, and saw him standing with his back turned to the other wall, watching. As her brown eyes locked with his blue ones, he glanced away, the thought apparently trailing off and disintegrating. Like Thaos’s essence had.

A chime like perfectly plump drops of water snapped Junisce’s attention back to her side, opposite where was. Someone’s hand was holding her own. “It is in the past now, Watcher,” breathed the Grieving Mother. “Let this day remain there.”

The scoff was past her lips before Junisce knew it was coming, as toxic and bitter as a poison trap someone noticed a second too late. “How?” she bit out. “How the fuck do I let this—the fact that the gods are _fake_ and there’s a guy who’s been single-handedly changing the world for millennia and that maybe the Glanfathans aren’t so far off, practically worshipping the Engwithans, and that there’s a whole generation that’s gonna grow up without actually _living_—” 

Junisce choked as she came up from the tirade for air, and fell silent abruptly, like closing her lips could keep her stress from bubbling over. From the way the Grieving Mother’s hand was shaking around her own, she was failing pretty badly. “I’m supposed to just let that lie?” Her voice was too quiet now, soft like it would be on a hunt but lacking any of the confidence normally found there.

“You don’t have to,” Edér started uncertainly. “You could, y’know, tell people.”

Aloth flinched for real this time, and Junisce found she, for once, agreed.

“Because that’ll be so easy,” rasped another voice, one Junisce wished she didn’t have to hear right now. Durance’s tone certainly grated, but it had nothing on the sharp words she was sure were coming. “Convince the whole world that kith having been the gods’ bitch is a bad thing when all anyone wants to do is let themselves be stepped on in the name of something holy.”

Sometimes, it was so tempting to pretend Durance wasn’t there that Junisce was genuinely surprised he was still around.

She sighed. “I’ll leave that to you, then, asshole,” she said, closing her eyes. “Now you can go around calling your goddess a whore and actually have something to back it up with.” Hopefully his cheeks were red with anger.

When the tunnel trembled, and the sound of shattering rocks filled the air (throwing yet another layer of dust onto them all), Junisce almost smiled. Nothing like angering a cynical old man to get stuff done.

“Hey, watch it!” Sagani called sharply. By the time Junisce’s eyes were open again, the ranger was gone, frantically inspecting the tunnel for damage. Aloth’s attention was also turned back to their task, and the Grieving Mother’s hands had drawn back, starting to weave a soft tune to coax the emotions of all involved back down to something more manageable.

This, of course, left Edér unaccounted for, and so Junisce was mostly unsurprised when she felt something warm and solid fall across her shoulders. Edér was sitting just a little to her left, staring straight over into the opposite wall as he rested an arm around her.

Junisce glanced at the hand laying atop her right bicep and, like cream into coffee, a tiny drop of guilt plunged and weaved its way through her. Of the two holy men in their group, this one Junisce didn’t know how to deal with. With Durance, it was easy to just let him be angry, to fuel that anger when it was useful and to fight back when it wasn’t. Feelings were going to be hurt either way with him, so what Junisce said didn’t matter so much.

But Edér, too, just had the foundations of his faith shaken by what they had seen. While Durance was an ally, sometimes (at best), Edér was a friend. Junisce had no idea what to do with that.

“I dunno where the others’ll go… or do after this,” he was saying. “But I’ve been thinking of heading back to Dyrford. ’S not too far from your place.” The sounds of rock shifting, punctuated in equal parts by soothing chimes and irritable grumbles from their companions, staved off total silence for several minutes before Edér sighed. He adjusted his arm a bit, like he was thinking of taking it back. He didn’t. “I guess what I’m sayin’, Jun, is that even if you don’t tell anyone anything ‘bout what happened here… you don’t gotta live like you’re the only one who knows. We’re all there with you.”

It stung Junisce’s pride a little to realize that might have been exactly what she wanted to hear, but that didn’t make her any less grateful. It was easier, now, to breathe. She reached up and clapped the large hand on her shoulder twice in acknowledgement before settling her head back against the wall.

Something occurred to her, then, as she thought of the others back at the keep who didn’t yet know everything they had seen here. A glint of dangerous joy filled her eyes as she looked towards her friend, soft smile on her lips sharpening into a smirk. “So,” she drawled, “who wants to tell Pallegina?”


End file.
